Saturday, February 14, 2009

We've been wanting to for a long time, and have recently had the new incentive that we're just not going to fit in our current rental now. But what finally got us to jump is, first of all, things (finally) getting a bit more affordable, but also our recent discovery of Redwood City's "alphabet neighborhood", which has an unusual combination of suburban niceness, (relative) affordability, and convenient access to transit. It's a pretty quick bike ride, and a quite doable walk to Sequoia Station, and unlike a lot of ostensibly much posher parts of RWC, you (or your kids) don't have to go through any sketchy areas to get there.

We haven't yet adopted the free-range kids philosophy, but this location will make us feel comfortable turning our daughter (and eventually, son) loose on the world a little sooner than a lot of others would, and put interesting things to do within reach... She already knows how to get to Great America, after all.

Monday, February 02, 2009

According to a Friends of The Earth report (they advocate spending it on transit first, and of what is spent on roads, emphasizing repairs over new construction), we're not the best (Massachusetts) but not the stupidest (Florida--who'd a thunk!) either:

CALIFORNIA

The California DOTs request, while not as ideal as Massachusetts, shows that Californias government is thinking about investing smartly. Californias DOT wants 60 percent of stimulus transportation funding to go to roads, and only around 37 percent for public transportation. However, Californias roads and bridges are in great need of repair, and it is encouraging that Californias DOT request allocated nearly 70 percent of the funding for roads towards repair. Already, 13 percent of Californias bridges are considered to be structurally deficient and 18 percent of the states roads are in poor condition; these figures are among the highest of the 19 states analyzed. Californias transportation sector causes the largest percentage of global warming pollution out of all states, with 58 percent of global warming pollution in the state resulting from transportation. To combat this, further investment in public transportation should be considered, even though 10 percent of Californians already use alternative transportation modes in their daily commutes.

Now would be a good time, of course, to make noise and get these ratios improved (or at least, apply enough pressure to keep that 37% from mysteriously shrinking).